Buddhi and Self consciousness unite – becomes the Higher Self

March 1, 2016 - By S. Ormerod

I came across the following quote in the Secret Doctrine regarding Christ, Christos and our Spiritual Ego. I think HPB makes it clear that our Higher Self is the union of Buddhi (the vehicle of Atman) and Manas (mind), hence the awakening of the spirit within the physical. Christos is referred to as the seventh principle or Atman.

Of course we hear the Christian term, “Christ manifest in you”, or “Christ appeared as god on earth”. This terminology came about as the result of the creation of a “personal God”, by the church, a god outside of ourselves, willing to take on all our sins in return for blind faith, worship, and in general giving up of our thinking faculty. It was a way to dismantle the idea of the higher spiritual faculties innate in man, those very spiritual faculties which give him the awareness and hence the power to choose his own destiny.

“……….regarded in the light of the Logos, the Christian Saviour, like Krishna, whether as man or logos, may be said to have saved those who believed in the secret teachings from “eternal death” to have conquered the Kingdom of Darkness, or Hell, as every Initiate does. This in the human, terrestrial form of the Initiates, and also because the logos is Christos, that principle of our inner nature which develops in us into the Spiritual Ego – the Higher-Self – being formed of the indissoluble union of Buddhi (the sixth) and the spiritual efflorescence of Manas, the fifth principle * the Logos is passive Wisdom in Heaven and Conscious, Self-Active Wisdom on Earth,” we are taught.” SD Vol. II, 230-1

• It is not correct to refer to Christ – as some theosophists do – as the sixth principle in man – Buddhi. The latter per se is a passive and latent principle, the spiritual vehicle of Atman, inseparable from the manifested Universal Soul. It is only in union and in conjunction with Self-consciousness that Buddhi becomes the Higher Self and the divine, discrimination Soul. Christos is the seventh principle if anything.